


In Which Optimus Prime Loses a Kismesis, Megatron Takes a Chance, and Everyone Else Gets a Clue

by tanarill



Series: Cybertronian Quadrant Shenanigans [1]
Category: Homestuck, Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Anthropology, Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Crossover, Ethical Dilemmas, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Getting Together, History, How The War Was Won, Humans In Troll Romances (Homestuck), Idiots in Love, M/M, Multi, Name Changes, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Pervert Bumblebee, Poetry, Slavery, Slow Build, Social Injustice, Social Justice Movement, Systemic Oppression, Troll Romance (Homestuck), interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-11
Updated: 2018-09-11
Packaged: 2019-07-10 23:44:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanarill/pseuds/tanarill
Summary: The stereotype is that humans make the best auspitices. It was, after all, a human who decided to step up to being the most necessary auspitice in galactic history. And it is true that, of the humans who choose to engage in mech romance, a statistically significant number of them don't even make an attempt at concupiscent quadrants. No one has ever held it against them, since their own unique biology requires that some minimum number of them stay concupiscent with each other. Humans make poor moirails, it's said, because they don'tdosocial monogamy; and they make great auspitices, for the same reason.The truth, as ever, is more complicated.





	In Which Optimus Prime Loses a Kismesis, Megatron Takes a Chance, and Everyone Else Gets a Clue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts).



> What if one species of violent and slightly nuts alien had the romance of an entirely different species of violent and slightly nuts alien?
> 
> On the suggestion of more than one comment, a primer on the romance system in question can be found [here](https://www.homestuck.com/story/2392). 
> 
> I blame [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat).

So first of all, the Decepticons and the Autobots are all completely mortified at trying to explain mech romance to humans, because humans just don't get it and probably never will, their romance is tied into their _reproductive_ drive of all things, it's ridiculous. But Spike won't stop asking why Megatron and Optimus Prime keep going off together alone after battles and no one seems worried by this. Like, if they can sit down and talk and not kill each other for ten minutes every single battle, why can't they sit down and talk and not kill each other the rest of the time?

It's Bumblebee who eventually has to sit down and explain it, because Bumblebee is the one who chose Spike even though Spike can't even _interface_. Sam, once he more or less understands, absolutely _flips his shit_. One, he and Bumblebee are apparently alien-married and no one bothered to tell him; two, _Megatron_ and _Optimus Prime_ are also alien-married, but not the same kind; and three, no one thinks any of this is gay because aliens don't _do_ gender.

It takes Bumblebee weeks to get him to calm down.

But once he finally gets over it, Spike does what he always does, which is try to solve the problem. It works for Bumblebee, in the sense that now he knows what a moirail is supposed to do and that he's supposed to be one, he can do the job instead of fumbling around in the dark. It's . . . weirdly good, too, that he has someone other than Carly with whom he can _talk_ about these things.

He explains it to Carly too, of course. She takes it a lot better than he did, which is to say, she just about falls over laughing. Then he manages to get her to understand that he's alien-married to Bumblebee, that's the level of commitment, and he's kind of not going to dump Bumblebee, not even for her, and is she okay with that?

Carly stops laughing and goes to ask someone about it. Then she comes back later and says that yup, she's okay with that, and does this mean they can finally be actually dating?

So that's pretty great.

And then the next time the Decepticons launch an attack he's paying attention, and has the right knowledge. Still, after the battle - the Decepticons got away without more than a few tons of steel - he settles down to ask Bumblebee about it.

"That is so entirely gross," says Bumblebee. "Everyone on both sides of this war can see it, everyone, but Starscream _keeps going after him_. As though Megatron would ever cheat on Optimus Prime like that."

"Er," says Spike. "Why hasn't anyone stepped in? That's the point of auspi - "

"Yes, but he's already got that quadrant filled, hasn't he? Thundercracker and Skywarp. And no one _else_ is sketch enough to think that it's okay to try and fill someone's already-filled quadrant."

"Okay, well then, what about the pale one?" he asks. "A moirail would have to tell him this, wouldn't they?"

"Yes," says Bumblebee. "They do. And then when he doesn't stop they dump him. We went through this all four million years ago."

"Oh," he said. "What about Megatron's quadrants?"

Bumblebee shrugged around him, which was weird because they usually did this with Sam inside his transport form. It was as close to interfacing as they could get. "Ashen - no. Different flush partner every few decacycles. Every Decepticon not stably with a matesprit ends up there eventually. More than once if they stay on-base."

"So dude has commitment issues," says Spike.

"Yeah. He refuses to get a moirail; I'm pretty sure Shockwave offered, like, back at the outbreak of the war, but he's still waiting for that special someone."

"What the _hell_?" says Spike. "And no one has tried to set him up?"

"Would you?" asks Bumblebee, which, good point.

But it . . . niggles, at the back of his head, annoying and present and _persistent_. He can't help think about it, and it turns out that quadrant gossip is one of the major topics of conversation in any group of mechs. Which in practical terms means they're always up for speculating about who has a crush on whom, and who might do well in this or that quadrant. It is kind of fun, he has to admit: Autobots speculating about Decepticons in a way that has no stakes whatsoever. No wonder all the women he knows do this constantly.

And, okay, so _he_ isn't a mech, which means he gets a bit of a pass on ignoring social conventions that only work if you have internal radio transmitters. He pushes it a bit, because it's almost physically painful to watch Ultra Magnus and Ironhide dance around each other like that, why can't one of them just _ask the other out_. So they get together, red-wise, and since it works so well he pushes on Jazz and Prowl to get their shit together. And so on. The result is that six months later half the 'bots on base have filled at least one additional quadrant. Some of the time (he tries not to let human mores and the idea of _fraternization_ trip him up too much) with Decepticons.

What he didn't realize was that this was getting him a certain reputation. It's brought to his attention when he is kidnapped by _Rumble_ of all people. The weird thing is that it's very clear that Rumble isn't actually trying to hurt him, carrying him gently away from the battle. At least, as gently as he knows how: Spike is going to be bruises all over tomorrow. "Er," he says. "Please put me down."

"I need to talk to you first," says Rumble urgently.

"Okay?" he says.

"Right," says Rumble, and then he doesn't say anything else.

"Rumble," he prods.

"It's just awkward!" protests Rumble. "Okay. I hate Eject."

"Um. Good for you?"

"No, I mean I - can you maybe tell him that I hate him?"

"Oh my god," says Spike, as the clue bat hits.

"Human - "

"No. I mean. Yes. I'll tell him. You - " didn't have to kidnap me, except, no, absolutely Rumble did. "Is there any particular reason _why_ you hate him?"

"Does it matter?"

" _Yes_ ," he says.

"Fine. Eject is an idealistic idiot sparkling who thinks it's possible for _team sports_ to replace real combat and wants everyone to live in peace and harmony. As if. And he looked better in red," adds Rumble, as an afterthought. Where it should be, thought Spike.

"Alright, I'll let him know. You really do have to put me down, though."

Later, during the debrief, he has to actually _explain_ that Rumble kidnapped him for quadrant-related shenanigans, which makes Bumblebee rev his engine in a dangerous way, and he holds up his hands and says, " _Not like that_. He just wanted me to tell his hatecrush about it."

So then the gossip chain is all speculation on who it could be, and people keep coming over to ask him to spill. It's better, this way, because eventually Eject has to come and ask, the data specialists are just so _nosy_ , and he can tell him without it being obvious. Eject gets it too, because he goes back to his group and ruefully explains that Sam won't tell anyone but the intended recipient, discreetly. And then he goes off and -

Spike doesn't actually pay too much attention there, really. But a couple of weeks later Eject comes over to him repainted in blue but still kind of scratched up and dented and radiantly happy, so apparently it worked out. He almost manages to be only pleased and not a little bit worried about the implications of black romance.

But that kind of opens up the floodgates, because now the Decepticons know there's a way to inform their Autobot hatecrushes about it without it looking like ordinary battlefield flirting, it's nonstop time to be kidnapped. Okay, it doesn't really happen that often, because Spike is sensible and avoids battles where seventeen-ton mechs throw themselves at each other. But when he _is_ at one, it's almost certain that a 'Con is going to come over and kidnap him to talk for a few minutes, waxing poetic over the terrible qualities of their hated. Most of the time he just ends up giving them pep talk about going after the person they hate.

It's weird living a life where being kidnapped while your giant robot buddies duke it out is some kind of _normal_ , though, so he makes an email address and hands it over the next time. The kidnappings cease immediately; instead, he has an inbox full of requests. It really is much faster to sort it out that way, and the Autobots like the discretion.

It gets downright surreal when he opens a request from Soundwave, who as far as he knows is happily in spades with Blaster. Which he is. The request is for help dealing with wooing his flushcrush and at this point he stops reading to say out loud, "How is this my life?" The flushcrush in question is Long Haul. "Seriously. _How_ is this my _life_?"

He does help, though. Decepticons who are spending time with their quadrants are Decepticons who don't want to leave base, or something like that.

Bumblebee finds the whole thing hilarious, of course.

"Really? Because I get the sense that doing this is a _little_ pale, and I thought I wasn't supposed to - "

"I have _watched_ human television, Spike," explains Bumblebee. "I knew I wasn't going to get exclusivity. Humans aren't built that way: you're all a little bit pale for the whole entire universe. Besides, it is working. Having a whole bunch of Decepticons who will not kill us, who will turn traitor and save us if it looks like we're going to be killed - "

"Yes, and?"

"And," says Bumblebee, in a tone that suggests if he had a human face he'd be blushing outrageously, "it's _hot_."

He stops. Then he says, "Kinky."

"Spike!"

So that's not a problem, and after another six months the Decepticons have also managed to fill all the quadrants they're going to. While it was happening, they seem to have collectively decided that while they still don't care about humans in general, they're also not going to go out of their way to hurt humans. The fact that this is an improvement says something terrible.

At that point, he really thinks that is going to be _it_ , and then he gets an email from someone asking him to please, for the pity of Primus, get Optimus Prime and Megatron back in diamonds. He sits there staring at it for a while, and then goes to ask.

"Well, yeah," says Bumblebee. "I mean, I personally don't remember it, I'm younger, but - "

"So this _entire war_ ," demands Spike, "is a pale/black flip?"

"Spike," says Bumblebee.

"Well then what _did_ happen?"

"No one knows."

"Optimus does," he says. "They've been interfacing every few weeks since this started."

"Well, then, he isn't telling," says Bumblebee.

"Has anyone ever asked?" It's fine to gossip, but utterly taboo to ask someone about their quadrants. Being willing to break that is part of the reason he's effective, as a matchmaker.

From Bumblebee, silence.

"Right," he says.

Optimus just looks at him for a while before saying, "I have never told you about the Matrix of Leadership."

It's not a statement that needs a reply, but Optimus seems to be expecting one, so he says, "No."

Optimus nods. "It's an entirely overblown name for a relic that doesn't do much other than provide me with an alternate weighting system, but it chose me. He's been taking it out on me ever since."

"You don't . . . actually hate him pitch, do you?"

"That's the only way he'll have me," says Optimus softly. "So I learned."

"That is possibly the most dysfunctional quadrant I've ever heard of," says Spike, impressed. "Including mine." He's not even a mech, and he knows Bumblebee gets a lot of flak about that.

"Mm."

"What else does it do?" asks Spike.

"What?"

"You said it doesn't do much beyond give you a different weighting algorithm, but not much isn't nothing. What else does it do?"

"Oh. It. I can feel sparks, sort of. That's how I knew you were trustworthy, Spike Witwicky. You feel it."

"Humans don't have sparks," he says, too stunned to say anything else.

"You call them something different," says Optimus. "That doesn't mean they are."

"Oh." Then he thinks the obvious thought and says, "Wait, but, you _interface_ with him."

Optimus smiles, slow and sad, and says, "Yes. We each believe there is a truth the other is not seeing. In our own ways, we are still attempting to guide each other, as twisted as that may be."

"It's been _eight million years_."

"I am aware," says Optimus, and he can hear it: every second of eight million years of fighting a war he hated against an enemy he didn't really want to beat.

"That isn't what I meant," says Spike, covering his face with a hand. "All right. Next time you interface, make sure he knows that I would like to talk."

"That is much too dan - "

" _Don't. You. Dare_ ," he says. "It is my choice. Besides, the Decepticons are good enough at kidnapping me by now."

 

It really isn't that much of a surprise when he is kidnapped. It's Rumble, who has known him for longest, which is a nice touch. He suggests after the first few minutes that really, he can walk on his own, he isn't going to try to run away. Rumble says, "Orders," kind of apologetically, and keeps carrying him.

They rendezvous with the stunticons. There's a bit of awkward finagling around each other as they try to transfer him and prevent him escaping while he's trying to climb into the Porsche. Then it's driving forever. At about two hours in he leans the seat back and asks if there's long enough to take a nap. There is, so he does that.

It's much later when he wakes up, sun slanting into twilight, and they're rolling up to an abandoned and overgrown warehouse somewhere. He thinks he's in Ohio, or possibly Illinois. The Decepticons who are visible are stationed around the periphery. Megatron is waiting in the interior. He gets out without prompting, walking forward with no hesitation while behind him Dead End goes back to being a robot.

Megatron offers him a hand. He steps onto it with a confidence he doesn't feel, holding onto a thumb that's half his height for balance. Megatron looks at him, scanning him in a thousand different ways.

"Well, human?"

"You know, I had a whole thing planned," he says. "About mutual understanding and the difference between subjective and objective truth and the meaning of compromise. Now that I'm here I realize that's not going to work. So I'll do it the simple way instead. Ashen for you."

That's got them, he can tell. Not that the guards are supposed to be listening in on this conversation, of course, but _Decepticons_. They all are. And now they're all shocked. In eight million years there hasn't been anyone willing to step into the clover-shaped hole between Megatron and Optimus Prime. The fact that the person who wants to do so now is a human - is just something Megatron is going to have to get over.

He's being lifted, high enough that he can meet the mech eye-to-optic. This close, and with the scanning this intense, he can feel the staticy cling as the electric fields build around him. "You? You can't even _interface_."

"And that makes my read on emotions any less real?"

He's surrounded by mechs who he's helped quadrant, in some cases after actual millions of years of crushes. There is nothing wrong with his ability to read emotions.

To his credit, Megatron doesn't even try to deny it. "And what makes you think we even need an auspitice?"

He doesn't justify that with a verbal answer. He just motions: to the warehouse, the Decepticons, in a larger sense to the world and the galaxy beyond it and the war.

"You'll be dead before we can even get a proper rapport."

"So it doesn't hurt you to give it a try for half a vorn."

"I could break you by _accident_."

"You'll just have to be careful." It is a kind of game of chicken. He has to push the impression that he doesn't think Megatron is capable of _care_ , without falling prey to believing it himself. And he really doesn't: anyone who doesn't _care_ wouldn't still be fighting eight million years later.

Megatron looks at him for a long impenetrable moment more, and then says, "I suppose I will. Decepticons, move out. I'll rejoin you once I've . . . taken him home."

Megatron's alternate form of a gun is not particularly suited to sitting in, so Megatron moves his hand so he can climb off and perch, carefully, on his shoulder. As soon as they leave the warehouse, he says, "You don't have to carry me around for hours."

"Have to, no," said Megatron. "But I would like to get to know my esrtwhile auspitice. However temporary you turn out to be."

Spike shrugs; that's perfectly fair. "What do you want to know?"

"Why do you even want to? You're human."

"Yeah," he says. "Bumblebee says that humans are a bit pale for the whole world. We don't do interpersonal relationships the same way you do. Different evolutionary priorities. One of the strongest is to smooth out fighting in our kin-groups."

"I count as your kin-group?"

"You're in Optimus Prime's, and he's in mine, so by a transitive property that we call _in-law_ in this part of the world, you end up in mine as well. Besides, it doesn't seem to me that being in the wrong quadrant is doing either of you any good."

"So you're going to try to pull us into the right one," says Megatron.

"Yup," he says. Then a thought occurs to him. "Oh, but - please don't settle spades with Starscream. I'm pretty sure he set this up so that he could, and we try not to _encourage_ that kind of behavior."

Megatron snorts, which this close was palpable as a rumble in his frame. "No. Starscream is annoying, but not kismetic material."

"Good," he says, relieved.

"In what way did he set this up?" asks Megatron.

"Oh, well. You know I, um, help, with quadranting?"

"I'm amazed your moirail lets you."

"My relationship with my moirail is none of your business," he says. "I got tired of being kidnapped, so he suggested setting up an email address. I can be kidnapped if I need to meet face-to-face, I'm here now, but most of the time that's overkill. I got an email asking me to get you and Optimus back together in diamonds. I didn't even know you ever _were_."

"We weren't," says Megatron shortly. It's a warning not to push.

It's a bright glaring signpost, for an auspitice. "He seemed to think you were."

"We _weren't_."

He waits a few moments, and then says, "You understand that I can't interface. You do know that, right?"

Megatron isn't stupid: he gets the point immediately. "There was a mech, Orion Pax. But he's dead now."

There is more there, but Megatron clearly doesn't want to talk about it, and respect for the dead is one thing that both humans and mechs share. "All right. And you hate Optimus Prime."

"Yes."

"And by extension, the Autobots."

" _No_."

"No?"

"No. I find them ridiculous and idiotic, and would rather they stop being willfully _blind_ , but I don't hate them."

"Better," says Spike. "Now tell me what they're being blind about."

"You don't _know_?"

"I've only ever heard it from the Autobot side. I want you to tell me in your own words."

Megatron snorts again, but does comply. "I have . . . read human history. You waged war, the greatest and deadliest this nation ever saw, to break the shackles of slavery."

"Yes?"

"And yet you hate _us_ for daring to do the same."

Shock zings along his limbs, but he does manage to say, "We have time. Tell."

 

Megatron stops on the outskirts of a city - Toledo - and waits patiently. It doesn't take long. Bumblebee comes roaring out of the dark and brakes on the other side of the parking lot. Megatron leans down, careful to keep his hand steady until it's on the ground and Spike can just hop down. "Thanks," he says. "Ashen for you."

There is no snort, no snide remark. Megatron just stands back up, gives one solemn nod to Bumblebee, and turns to walk away.

Bumblebee is, at least, warm inside. "Oof," says Spike, buckling in.

"All right?" asks Bumblebee.

"Not really," says Spike.

"Can I help?"

"Mm," says Spike. "If you don't mind answering some hard questions."

Bumbleebee does try, but Bumblebee is younger than the others, by millions of years. Everything he knows is from historical datapacks or other mechs telling him, not primary memory. He hadn't been _there_. He can't speak to the truth of what Megatron had said.

What he can tell is bad enough, though. He can tell he's going to have to get the idea that what the Decepticons are doing to the humans is not less bad than what the Senate had done to the Decepticons through Megatron's head, and he has only the vaguest idea how. It . . . helps, that Megatron has unbent to the point he will consider him a person capable of being an auspitice. He's just not sure that it's going to help _enough_.

It's pretty late when they get back to base. He's slept some on the way back, but that was still a four-hour drive each way. Also, Optimus Prime is waiting for them. He looks up at the concerned blue eyes and says, "Congratulations: you no longer have a kismesis, you have a co-auspiticee. And _I_ am going to take a long hot shower and then go to sleep." He turns and heads toward the human-sized portion of the base, where none of the mechs can follow, without waiting for a response.

 

Things don't look less terrible in the morning, but a good night's sleep and time to settle his emotions has helped. Breakfast also helps. Then he sighs, and boots up his computer, and gets to work.

Later, he calls Carly.

"What's up, flush-crush?" she asks. She's over in Massachusetts this week, reverse-engineering Cybertronian tech with her friends at MIT.

He's also absolutely certain she knows the difference between a flush-crush and being matesprits. "I've ashed up."

"Oh? With whom?"

"Optimus Prime . . . and Megatron."

Carly shouts, "Spike!"

"I know," he says.

"I really don't think you do! What possessed you to - "

"I _know_ ," he says. "But no one else was doing it!"

"Yes, because no one else is stupid enough to _get between those two_!"

"Well, you know me: I don't have two brain cells to rub together," he says smiling a bit.

"I'm being serious, Spike," says Carly.

"I know," he says. "But it really needed doing, and it's not a job any of them can do. An auspitice has to be a neutral party."

"We're not neutral."

"Neutral enough, then. I'm willing to listen to _both_ of them, at least. That's the most important thing."

"And?"

He rubs a hand over his face. "The Decepticons started fighting for good reasons. They aren't _now_ , but I've been doing some reading. There's . . . I think there's a way, maybe."

Carly is quiet for a long moment. Then, voice carefully level, she says, "You do what you have to do, Spike Witwicky."

He swallows around the sudden lump in his throat. "Yeah. If. If it works - I. Will you marry me?"

"SPIKE!"

 

He's in the common areas for about four seconds before Jazz tells him to go talk to Optimus _now_ , because everyone else is done with being shouted at. He sighs, but this is what he signed up for after all. "Where is he?"

"Where is he ever?"

The immense room that is his office-cum-bedroom. The Autobots had installed human-sized doors in the corner of their big ones, but for all private rooms those are code-locked. He presses the button to let the room occupant know he's there, and almost before he's done the door is sliding open.

"Spike," begins Optimus.

"Nope," he says. "Come on. Transform. We're going driving."

"I can't leave _base_ \- "

"Can and will, Optimus, or you can just shove yourself back into spades with the mech you want for your diamond. Let's go."

This does the trick; of course it does. Megatron isn't going to attack today, not while he's still waiting to see if this clover is going to be stable or not. And Optimus really wants to talk to him. He just needs to talk somewhere away from the other Autobots.

He waits until they are off-base before he says, "So, like I said. Co-auspiticees. I know it isn't pale, but at least it's not caliginous. And it isn't the final goal."

Optimus says, "That is _depraved_ ," but not as though he's worried about the impropriety; instead, he's hopeful and desperately trying not to be.

"Yes, well, you're the one who fucked up so badly as a moirail that you actually need an auspitice to help you work it out." He waits. Once he's sure that Optimus isn't going to object to his assessment, he says, "Tell me about Orion Pax."

There is a - not a noise, exactly, but a lack of one - that the mechs do when they're shocked. Megatron did it last night; Optimus does it now. "Orion Pax was - what I was called. Before the Matrix."

"Optimus is a regnal name?"

This time the pause is Optimus linking back to the base computer, followed by Wikipedia. "Not . . . really. A regnal name is something that one chooses. I didn't; as I said, the Matrix chose me. I woke up afterward and my name had changed."

"You're going to have to go through that one again," he says. "How do you guy pick your names?"

He has done something unutterably alien again, he knows as Optimus goes quiet around him. "We don't. We just _have_ them, from the moment our sparks instantiate. Is a name something humans may pick?"

"It's just a word that we use to refer to a person," he says. "It has no meaning other than what we give it, and people can have more than one. _I_ have more than one. You . . . do know Spike isn't usually a name, right?"

"I do; I had thought . . . oh, fuel clogs. I had thought that it was part of why you are so good at representing us to Earth."

"Yeah, no. The name my parents gave me, the one on all my paperwork, is Samuel Witwicky. I don't like it much is all."

"And you just - changed it?" Optimus is going into humans-are-weird-and-miraculous mode again.

"It's more about convincing others to use your given name, but I'm getting the sense that isn't how it works for you guys."

"No! We have our names. Some traumatic life events can, er, cause a change, but - "

"Nope," Spike interrupts. "Stop. Go back. Tell me what you just tried to skip over there."

Optimus makes a frustrated noise, like he wasn't trying to skip something important and why is Spike asking about something so basic? But he does answer. "Changing a name isn't - it is not common, and when it happens, it's almost always because the person is changed so much that the name no longer - "

"Uh-huh," says Spike, getting the picture. "And the Matrix was an extremely traumatic life event."

"It was not - as though I went offline in a mining disaster and spent millenia lost underground while my memory and core degr - "

"Ew," says Spike. "Stop. I don't need to know. I get it. But it _was_ a traumatic life event, even if nothing was lost. Optimus Prime."

Optimus Prime gives in. "Yes."

"Good. Okay. I know which questions to ask, now."

"Ask them," says Optimus Prime, sounding more resigned than anything else.

"Not from you. Forcing you to relive your trauma is not the goal here."

"Then what is?"

"Forcing you to admit that it was," he says quietly.

If Optimus Prime had a face right now, he is pretty sure, the big mech would be staring. This whole conversation, aside from the interesting sociological notes that he's going to have to pass off to the xenoanthropologists, is verging on the emotional territory covered by a feelings jam. The only reason he's getting away with it, depraved and human as it is, is because he's hammering Optimus Prime with his own weak points instead of helping with them.

"Well," says Optimus Prime eventually. They're on I-696, the long east-west arm of the urban auxiliary that meets up with I-275 to more or less encircle Detroit. At this time of day it's pretty light traffic. "What now?"

"Now," he says, grimly, "you talk to me about Cybertonian slavery, and why you thought it was okay to defend it."

They end up going all the way around the city twice, I-275 down to Dearborn, I-75 up to I-94, and I-94 back I-696, shouting at each other almost the whole time. Then he assigns Optimus Prime some historical reading. That is basically the whole day gone, since there isn't anything he can usefully do in the three hours after they get back to base. But it turns out he doesn't have to; Bumblebee finds him immediately and makes off with him to do cultural attaché things, in this case watching the new Star Trek flick.

After that he's recovered enough to have a feelings jam, during which Bumblebee also gets distracted by the fact that humans can change their names. He points out that Bumblebee had, too, but Bumblebee says that wasn't changing it so much as translating it, and since then he's learned that Yellowjacket would have been a much better translation but he's stuck with Bumblebee now.

"I'd call you Yellowjacket, if you wanted," he says.

"Pervert," replies Bumblebee affectionately.

 

The next few days are normal. That is, the Decepticons don't attack anything other than a few out-of-the-way gas stations, and the Autobots don't really respond to those anymore so much as show up later to rebuild the place and pay for the stolen gas. He doesn't fill any more quadrants, which is excellent because the only one he has left is spades and he wouldn't survive spades with a mech.

He goes and talks to some British historians instead. That actually takes a week to set up, and then in the middle of his trip to England he gets an email from Megatron. It's full of posturing and threats, but really it's Megatron asking if his clover is stable or not.

He sends one back: we're stable, I'm just in England to learn some things and we should get together when I get back. All three of us.

The return email comes in not two minutes later. It's three Cybertronian glyphs, a lot of the fancy shades of meaning dropped because humans can't see ultraviolet and anyway the laptop screen doesn't display UV. The recognizable parts are very recognizable, though: [self][c3<][transmission recipient].

He smiles.

 

He's really not that surprised when Megatron is waiting with Bumblebee and Optimus Prime at Detroit Wayne. Everyone _else_ is clearly nervous, which, no wonder, the property damage those two tend to inflict when in close proximity usually starts at seven digits. But this one time they're very carefully not talking to each other, so nothing is on fire or collapsing.

He ignores them both and climbs into Bumblebee.

"That was extremely mean," says Bumblebee, as they pull away onto I-96.

"I'm not here to coddle them," he says. "If they've grown enough self-restraint to not goad each other into fighting, then fucking _good_. That's the point."

Bumblebee makes the noise he makes when Spike is being unrelentingly human and it is so _hot_ to watch, and says, "How was England?"

"How is England ever? It rained."

Bumblebee laughs.

The _next_ day he sends an email to both of his auspiticees, suggesting that a meeting is no longer out of the question, and if they were free they could do it today. About five minutes later, he's riding in Optimus Prime as they head toward the rendezvous, which is at a farm out in Milford. Megatron is waiting for them there.

"Well?" asks Megatron, while Optimus Prime transforms.

He holds up a finger, and says, "You both need to hear this. I'm only going to say it once."

Megatron isn't happy, but he does wait patiently while Optimus Prime comes over and says, "What?"

"There is a difference," he says, "between being _less wrong_ and being _right_. You have both managed some form of _less wrong_. And you're both nowhere near being right."

"But he - " begins Megatron, at the exact same time as Optimus Prime protests, "But _they_ \- "

" _I don't care_ ," he says. This is a lie, but it's important that they understand that nothing else comes into this quadrant but them. They can't begin to fix the war until they can fix each other. And it works, too, because they both shut up and look only at him. He points to Optimus Prime and says, "Did you do the assigned reading?"

" . . .yes," says Optimus Prime, unhappily.

"And _was_ there a viable solution that didn't involve a war?"

"If we could have left Cybertron - " begins Optimus Prime, before he cuts the Autobot off.

"I said a _viable_ solution. Where are the starships supposed to have come from? The energon to feed them? The weapons and armor to run the blockade that would have sprung up the _moment_ your Council realized what was going on?"

Optimus Prime looks down at him and doesn't say anything. He turns to Megatron. "But you are free now. The system is gone. There is nothing that says you have to _keep_ fighting."

He lets the silence ring.

"I - " Optimus Prime is the first one to find his voice. "I need to go think about this."

"Good," says Megatron. "Go do it elsewhere. I want to - talk."

Optimus Prime gives them both a look, horror and longing together, before he retreats.

Megatron hardly waits until he's out of earshot - mech earshot - before he demands, "How did you do that?"

"Oh, well," says Spike, and shrugs. "Human history might be short, but we've packed a lot in. I made him go read about how we get rid of . . . apartheid. And fail to get rid of apartheid. We've tried it every possible way by now, Megatron, run every scenario. We've never done it without violence. How did I do it? _I_ didn't. _Humanity_ brute-forced the problem for you. All I had to do was make Optimus Prime read enough to internalize that there _was_ no peaceful solution."

"I see. So there really was never any chance . . . "

"Depends. Maybe you could have convinced Orion Pax, maybe not. I never knew him. Optimus Prime is willing to accept the necessity of war; you could _definitely_ have convinced him. If you'd wanted to."

"Yes, _thank you_."

"Megatronus," he adds, just to really hammer the point home.

"Stop talking now," orders Megatron.

He quiets for a bit, watching Optimus Prime watch them, and letting Megatron think his way through all the mistakes _he_ has made. When he finally does speak, he asks a question. "Are you actually ashen for either of us?"

"Human ashen," he says. "Like I said, the priorities are different."

"Because if you keep going this way, you aren't going to have a clover soon."

"I am aware."

Megatron frowns, as though he wasn't sure what reaction he was hoping to get but that wasn't it, and then says, "What's the huge and obvious mistake I've been making?"

He looks up. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes."

"Despite my bizarre hardcoded biological priorities, which mean I will happily sacrifice my own life for those of my kin-group?"

" - you what?"

He smiles, and stands up. "Go do some reading, ashlove-mine. I'm sure you'll figure it out."

 

Optimus Prime is quiet on the way back to base, until he asks, "What did Megatron want to talk about?"

"Brute-force approaches to problem solving," he replies.

"Yes, that was . . . " Optimus Prime hesitates. "Not uncalled for, exactly, but . . . "

"It's okay to not like the truth," he says. "As long as you never allow not liking to progress to ignoring."

Optimus Prime says, "And you are a _good_ auspitice."

"I'm trying," he says.

There's an email from Megatron waiting for him by the time they get back to base. It's basically the stunned Cybertronian flailing they get when they do the reading and understand it's not just humans, it's a planet-wide imperative. Literally the entire biosphere evolved to produce offspring at all costs, up to and including a lifespan of less than five years in return for making actual millions of babies. Watching the Autobots go through it had been funny enough.

He reads the email, smiling, and replies with one suggesting he try writing a program that places a terran level of importance on survival at least until offspring have been produced, and then see if the humans' motivations regarding fighting and talking don't make sense to him now.

The response email comes after lunch, when he's sitting down with one of the xenoanthropologists. They're all gaga over the quadrants system, but they don't have the same rapport with the Autobots so none of them have managed to quadrant anybody. Some of them, he knows, are more than willing to try. He's trying to explain the level of steel he'd had to add to his spine to say those three words to Megatron.

"Oh, hey," he says. Megatron's response is the Cybertronian equivalent of keyboard-smashing, followed by the jagged question of just what he's supposed to _do_ with this? He's always known that humans are ridiculous, but knowing why doesn't help. Does it?

It can, he replies. Do you trust me?

Megatron doesn't reply again that day.

 

Or, it turns out, the next few days following. It's kind of a relief, because Optimus Prime has taken to following him around trying to _argue_ with history. Then, once he gives Optimus Prime the results of his enquiries in England, he keeps asking questions. He introduces Optimus Prime to the historians, who go a little weird that Optimus Prime wants to talk to them, but are willing enough, and then Optimus Prime starts pestering _them_ instead.

This is just in time, it turns out, because Megatron emails him with a date and a time and a location. He sighs, and then goes to get kidnapped again. It's Skywarp, who is not one of the Decepticons he really knows, but on the plus side his name is _really_ descriptive of his function because they're not aloft for two minutes before Skywarp - warps - and then they're cruising down for a landing at the Decepticon base.

"Wow," he says, and, "you could make so much money from that."

"What would I do with money?" asks Skywarp, confused.

Megatron is sitting at a him-sized desk, but he put out a hand to lift him up to the console. He was quiet for a while, but Spike doesn't push: he'll get there in his own time. The console was running some kind of war game, and it kept ending when the war went _nuclear_ , and then rerunning with different parameters. Over and over and over again. He doesn't get the point, even if it is kind of interesting to watch.

And then it finishes and a few glyphs flash on the screen. Megatron sighs. "The big obvious thing I've been ignoring: what is it?"

"Do you trust me?" he asks.

"You will spend your life to kill me, if you have to," says Megatron, considering. "You wouldn't like doing it - you're as ashen for me as it's possible for a human to get - but that is part of why you would. I trust that."

"Good," he says, "but not the answer to my question."

"Yes, Spike. I trust you."

"Better," he says. "Now: do you think I'm a particularly courageous or unusual member of my species?"

Megatron - pauses. "I _want_ to say yes."

"But you know I'm not," he says. "I'm not the best-qualified human to be your auspitice. I'm not the bravest, I'm not the most compassionate, and there are anthropologists who would chew off their own arms to be the cultural liason. I got this job because I happened to be the first human Bumblebee encountered who was more curious than afraid. I'm your auspitice because I'm the first human to see your missing third leaf and decide to step in." He says it gently, even though on some level Megatron must already know this. Humans have skewed priorities. It makes them both much less likely to stand in the middle of a fight between mechs, _and_ much more likely. "That's how we are."

Megatron taps his clawlike fingers on the console. "Yes."

"And you would have to have trusted anyone stepping in to an equal degree."

"Yes."

"We humans don't want to fight. The Autobots don't want to fight. If you don't want to fight either, all you have to do - is sit down and _talk_ with the rest of us."

"Spike." He says it sternly.

Spike ignores him. "But if the truth is that you _do_ want to fight, which you do, then there are better things to be fighting for than old grudges."

Megatron goes mech-still. Then, very carefully, he says, "What makes you say that?"

"Are you telling me you plan to settle down and become a solar farmer?" he asks. When Megatron doesn't reply he says, "Yeah. It took me a while to figure it out, because you all talk like that's your dream, but it isn't true. So what we _really_ have to do, first, is figure out what your side actually needs. Then we can start working on ways that everyone can get what they want."

"And that includes humans, who just want all of us to go away?"

"Is that what you think?" asks Spike. It really isn't. Humanity, from the first time they looked up and wondered what the stars were and if there were anyone there, has never wanted to be alone.

"Hmm," says Megatron. "Well. Pick a time and a place, then."

"Easy," he says, and takes out a cell phone.

Optimus Prime doesn't exactly pick up a telephone, but anyway, he picks up before the third ring. "Spike. Are you safe?"

"Sure. We're going to Mauritania. Meet us in Nouakchott."

"Mauritania? What are we going to do in Mau - "

Spike hangs up. "The trick," he says, almost conspiratorially, "is to not let him get started."

"Why _are_ we going to Mauritania?"

"You'll see when we get there," he says.

 

This is the part that is probably going to get him exiled from every country on Earth. He's not nervous, though. He'd known going in it was going to cost him his planet. Probably, he'd known when he went in for Bumblebee, although at that time the idea of figuring out what the Decepticons' issue was had been laughable. Now . . .

Now, he needs to arrive in Mauritania _with_ Megatron, and hopefully at about the same time as Optimus Prime. Megatron's alt-form is still a gun, and guns are still not great at intercontinental travel. Skywarp could have gotten him there in twenty minutes, ten of which would have been stunts. In the end, they fly over on Thundercracker, who wasn't one of the robots he'd helped set up in any quadrant, but doesn't seem to particularly hate anyone on the Autobot side, either.

Even going mach two, it's a four-hour flight. It takes Thundercracker about half an hour to crack and start asking questions. He doesn't answer those, instead turning to Megatron and telling him that he should learn Arabic, since they'll need it in Mauritania. When Thundercracker asks about him stepping into Megatron's clover, he decides to take a little pity. "Because it's not a job any mech could do. The history is too deep."

" . . . I suppose that's true," says Megatron, breaking in.

"So it had to be an organic," he continues. "Not me specifically, but someone who isn't afraid to die for something."

"I am not afraid to _die_."

He considers. "No. You're not. But it's not - when mechs like you are born - "

" - instantiate - "

" - right, that, there isn't any _expectation_ of death. Why would there be? You begin, and you can be destroyed, but it's not inevitable. Humans are dying from the moment we're born. We come and we go; and as the older go and are replaced, we forget. Deep history doesn't have time to form."

"Deep history . . . " says Megatron. "That's as good a name for it as any."

"But that still doesn't explain why _you_ stepped in!" objected Thundercracker.

"I stepped in," says Spike, "because I believe the two of them are idiots and the balance of evidence says they're going to keep throwing people into their war until there are _no people left_. I stepped in because kismeses is not the right quadrant. I stepped in because I am _ashen for them_. Okay?"

"Oh," says Thundercracker, barely a hum through the decking. "Oh, you really _are_. Wow. Bumblebee is one lucky mech."

"Really? I thought you guys all thought he was, uh - "

"Oh, he definitely is that, too," says Megatron. "In this case, his depraved tendencies just turned out to be correct. Statistically speaking, it had to happen eventually."

He made a mental note to ask Bumblebee about his depraved tendencies and how often, really, he stepped into quadrants with aliens.

"Hey," said Thundercracker. "Do you think you could set me up?"

"Er. A moirail?" he says. "Do you even _need_ a moirail?"

"Nah," says Thundercracker. "A flush fling."

"Um. You are aware human concupiscence is tied in with our reproductive drive?"

"Not all of you," says Thundercracker reasonably.

"And we can't interface. Even, even making babies, that's - "

"A one way data transfer," says Thundercracker. "A _really inefficient_ one-way data transfer. I know. But you're really ashen, and I guess you're a good moirail or 'Bee wouldn't have stuck with it, and - do you have any concupiscent quadrants?"

"I have a matesprit, yeah," he says.

"So," says Thundercracker.

He sighs. "I'll try," he says.

"All I'm asking," says Thundercracker.

They talk a bit more, about Thundercracker and his preferences. Spike has no idea who he even can set up with the mech, but more info in the dating profile is always better, right? Then Spike says, "Do you mind if I go to sleep for a bit? I know you guys don't need it the same way we do, but a few hours of quiet is - "

"You do you," says Thundercracker, so he sis back against Megatron's frame and lets the warmth and the motion lull him to sleep.

Megatron wakes him a bit before landing. "أنا أتكلم العربية," he says.

"Good," says Spike. "Has Optimus Prime arrived yet?"

"No," says Megatron. "They're still over the Atlantic. Why are we here?"

"I need to make a point. And then, I think, you - you and Optimus Prime both - are also going need to make a point. There's a desert over there. I figure you can't do too much harm, glassing a nice big hunk of it."

"Is there a reason I won't make it right here? I know Optimus Prime won't, but I - "

"Megatron. Scan around. See if you can't figure out where the nearest market with enough room for both of you is."

Megatron grits his teeth, and does that thing mechs can do where they stop paying attention to local sensory data and start paying attention to local radio scans. Thundercracker, who has reverted to robot mode, says, "Wow. A motivator of fucking diamond. You're all right, Spike."

"Thank you," he says.

By the time Optimus Prime arrives, almost two hours later, he and Megatron and Thundercracker are sitting in a largeish bazaar. It would be larger if the two Decepticons weren't taking up a significant amount of it, but they've been sitting there quietly for long enough that the people have stopped cringing away and are doing the food-buying. He's sitting in the shade they cast, and Megatron is doing a weird rumbly thing that he has almost decided is a purr when Optimus Prime walks in, carefully so as not to step on any of the shoppers.

"Spike," says Optimus Prime, clearly already cranky.

"Thundercracker, could you step off enough that I can - "

"Ew, yeah, I'm not a _pervert_ ; I'm gone."

"You can sit down," he says to Optimus Prime.

"What are we doing here?"

"People-watching," says Spike.

"We can people-watch in Detroit!"

"True," says Spike. "But _I'm_ not going to tell you. Megatron is."

"I am?" says Megatron.

"In a little while. I'm sure you've noticed already. I want to see if Optimus Prime does."

Optimus Prime sits, a little gingerly. "What is it that I'm supposed to be seeing?"

"It defeats the point if I tell you," says Spike. "Just . . . look. Observe. See."

Optimus Prime sits quietly for about ten minutes, and then says, "A lot of people shopping?" Some of them have recognized him. They're standing in front of him, twos and threes at a time, taking selfies.

"No," rumbles out Megatron, and, yeah, he's definitely spotted it.

Optimus Prime immediately goes on high alert, looking for the threat. Over the next ten minutes, as no danger presents itself, he gradually calms down. Five minutes after that, he says, "I honestly - "

"I know," says Spike. "All right, Megatron. Pick whichever one you like, but it has to be one who will be able to explain. Optimus Prime, you can carry me, since Megatron's going to be carrying some screaming woman."

"Er," says Optimus Prime. "Is Megatron going to kidnap someone?"

"Steal, anyway," says Spike, standing up and waiting for Optimus Prime to put down a hand so he can climb up before standing himself. "Megatron, please don't knock down any buildings on the way out."

"Why not?"

"The UN statistics says it's something like one in five. Is that the kind of collateral you're prepared to accept?"

Megatron grumbles, but stands up. "Fine. Can we start now?"

"Yes," says Spike.

Megatron waits a moment, before leaning forward and picking up a woman with a basket on her head. He carefully sets the basket aside, cups his hands together to hold the woman, who is by now screaming her head off, and says, "Follow me."

They walk for about twenty minutes. By the time they get there, the woman has stopped shrieking and Megatron is talking to her softly in what he presumes is Arabic. She still looks afraid, but when Megatron puts her down on the dusty ground she doesn't run. "Don't you dare suggest I put her back," says Megatron, dangerously.

"I would never," says Spike. "Why don't you introduce us?"

Megatron nods. "Spike, Optimus Prime, this is Fatimetou. She was, until extremely recently, a slave."

He sees it hit Optimus Prime, stun him. "She was - "

"A local police group will almost certainly come after us for 'kidnapping' her. By which they mean, freeing her."

"But - "

"Optimus Prime," Spike says. "Shut up and listen."

Optimus Prime shuts up, and listens. It's hard for him, Spike can see. He knows: Optimus Prime had put humans on a kind of pedestal, inside his head. He shouldn't have; he knows what people will do, when they are afraid. Now he learns about what people will do just because they are powerful and other are weak, and having that pedestal bombed from high orbit and ground beneath Megatron's feet is forcing him to think about a lot of things that he didn't want to think about.

Not all of them are from Earth. Not even most of them are from Earth. Most of them are Cybertron before the war, what Spike would have called racism except that race isn't really a thing for mechs. Classism, which the mechs all on their own had managed to _make_ a thing. Slavery, which is what it is when spoken plainly, none of this shit about moral failings or indentures.

It's hard, but Optimus Prime does exactly what Spike knew he would: he turns to Fatimetou, and asks if she would like to come live with the Autobots while they get her rescue officially documented so she can live in America legally.

Fatimetou nods, almost speechless, like she hadn't understood that she wasn't going back. She nods, and she begins to cry. Megatron is stuck translating, at least until Optimus Prime puts away his pride and asks for a language packet. Then it's the three of them, rapid-fire, Optimus Prime doing a million things at once to get her future settled and Megatron, slower and sardonic, making him slow down and think about all the things she needs right _now_. He smiles watching them.

And then some asshole opens fire on them. Optimus Prime is up and moving almost before the first bullets hit - neither of them, thankfully - and he's a living shield between them and the bullets by the time Megatron responds. Like all of Megatron's anything, his response is simple and brutal and incredibly effective, and then it's over. Those particular slavers are never going to hunt down any others, ever again.

"We should leave," says Megatron, understated as always.

"Yeah. I'm going to head back with Optimus Prime. But - you did get it, right?"

"I did," says Megatron. "I'll need to speak to you more about Functionist garbage, and how to present this to my people, but - that can wait. Miss Fatimetou cannot. I will send you an email tomorrow."

"Better make it in a couple of days," says Spike. "I'm going to have jet lag like nobody's business."

Megatron nods. "Spike - ashen for you." He turns and leaves.

He doesn't actually get to talk to Optimus Prime on the way back. Fatimetou starts asking questions and Optimus Prime is the one who speaks Arabic so he answers. After a while Fatimetou starts asking him to translate so she can talk to Spike. She wants to know about America. He answers, to the best of his ability. He can tell it isn't enough. He can also tell she has lots of giant-robot questions that she doesn't want to ask because the giant robot is the translator.

She crashes somewhere over the Atlantic, thankfully. Then Optimus Prime gets on the phone with people to track down amnesty groups and resettlement agencies. Spike sits back, closes his eyes, and considers the state of his clover.

 

It ends up being more than two days, because it takes two days just to get the process on Fatimetou started. Then, of course, Optimus Prime asks for him to come sit down and actually have that conversation.

He starts with, "Thank you. I wasn't sure if there were any things Megatron and I could still collaborate on."

"You are an idiot, Optimus Prime," says Spike. "You're lucky I'm ashen for you."

"Extremely," agrees Optimus Prime. "But now I - find I'm having second thoughts. We can't leave Earth, not while the Decepticons are still attacking. I'm just not sure if we can still be friends with your government. They know, and they have done nothing."

"It's worse than that," says Spike. "They have not done nothing. They stand against equality; they stand on the side of your Senate. I can show you."

For a moment it looks like Optimus Prime is going to dig in his heels, say no; and then his great generous bleeding heart, wide enough to accept multitudes, takes over. "You had better," he says.

They go for a ride around Detroit. Well, they go for a ride down Woodward, from its termination in Pontiac at the north end on south. The pass the neighborhoods. Bloomfield hills with its multimillion dollar McMansions and manicured golf courses. The chic splendor of Birmingham, with its trendy shopping district. The more mercantile district, grocery shopping and the Michigan Secretary of State office centered on Beaumont Hospital. Shops and businesses and restaurants bordering Huntington Woods and Royal Oak and the Detroit Zoo. The interchange with I-75. The drive past Ferndale, rejuvenated by urban renewal projects; and then the great twelve-lane dividing line that is 8 Mile Road.

The former Michigan State Fairgrounds where the base is now are next, and Palmer Park. Highland Park, third most dangerous municipality in the nation, still proud of the Highland Park Assembly Line and the invention of the affordable automobile; but it's not hard to see why it's so dangerous, not with that many buildings boarded up. Cadillac Place, where GM used to headquarter before it moved, and all the businesses that didn't have enough customers after to keep going. Downtown, with its stadium and library and the DIA and Wayne State, an island of prosperity amongst the ocean of urban decay that has hollowed this once-great city. Finally, Cobo Hall, which houses the annual Auto Show, and the _Spirit of Detroit_ which is meant to symbolize the city, and _The Fist_ monument to Joe Lewis that actually does.

They turn around there, and start heading back up. Optimus Prime is quiet, and Spike leaves him to his thoughts.

Finally, he says, "I - how do we even begin to fix this?"

"Who is we?" asks Spike.

"Spike - "

"No, I'm serious. Who is 'we'? Because I have no doubt that you, at least, have about a million ideas about buying up all those vacant lots and building wonderful modern homes and giving them away to the people who need them, but the trick is still going to be that it's too expensive for the residents you want to give them to. The house might be free, but the electricity isn't; the water isn't, the food isn't. The property taxes - which will be much higher now that there's a habitable building on-site - aren't. _The people you want to help will not be helped by your solution._ The system is set up so only rich people win: only the Senators win. If you want to truly make a change, there's a lot of destruction that needs to happen first. So. Who is 'we'?"

" . . . ah," says Optimus Prime.

"I'm going to give you some more things to read, when we get back to base," says Spike. "About how democracy works - and doesn't work - in America. Do you understand?"

"More than I would like to," says Optimus Prime.

 

Once Optimus Prime is sequestered away reading about the Civil War, Jim Crow, and redlining, he sends an email to Megatron. He opens it with the status update on Fatimetou, because he wants to encourage Megatron's budding understanding of humans as people and he's not an idiot. Then he asks if Megatron is okay to meet up soon so he can learn about Functionism, whatever that is.

Megatron makes him wait four days, because in some ways he is _incredibly petty_. Optimus Prime finishes reading about the old Jim Crow in that time, but by then he's figured out that he can just send Optimus Prime up to Flint and make him talk to all the people who are still there since GM pulled out, hear it directly from the ones who are suffering on the wrong end of the system. Make him shut up and listen.

The other thing that happens while he waits is that he gets an extremely worried call from the State Department. They've always been worried about the Cybertronians, even the friendly ones, and now they're _really_ worried that Spike is compromised. Being fair, they're probably right.

"Have the Decepticons actually managed to harm anyone in the last few raids?" he asks.

"Don't try to tell me that Megatron is so madly in love with you that he's willing to spare all humans on your behalf."

"No," he says. "That is really not how an auspiticism works. I have managed to convince the Decepticons that humans are _people_. Weird people, but people; and they don't go out of their way to hurt people."

"Yes; why exactly did you go to Mauritania and kidnap some girl?"

"If you mean Fatimetou, we did not kidnap her. We rescued her. From slavery." As you already know, he thinks, because it's the State Department. "I was making a point to Megatron."

"What point?"

"About systems of oppression," says Spike. "He got it, anyway. I'm going to give it a couple more days, and then try to point out that he is, currently, a system of oppression."

"Is this going to help, Witwicky?"

"It's like you just throw the reports into an incinerator," complains Spike. " _Yes_ , it's going to help. It's maybe not going to help Earth, or at least not in the short run, but it's going to help."

" . . . fine. We'll give you enough rope to hang yourself."

"And you really should read those reports. The history of the Cybertronian war is . . . very enlightening."

"I don't give a damn." The Secretary of State hangs up on him.

Spike looks at the phone. "You really should," he says again, softly, and sighs.

Megatron doesn't even hide, this time. He just sits in the parking lot of the 7-11, smiling faintly and creepily. It had not stopped a handful of people from taking selfies with him as the background. There was an ambulance sitting in the lot, not doing anything just then, but there, in case. Spike says, "My _life_."

'Bee says, "Your damn fault, moirail-mine. Off you go," and opens a door.

Spike steps out, and Megatron spots him and puts a hand down so he can lift him up onto his shoulder.

"All right," Spike says. "Functionists. Go."

Megatron tells him about the Functionists. He tells him about empurata, and the overlayers, and the fucking _arena_. He talks and talks, in the same low purring growl, but Spike can tell it's because he is ruthlessly suppressing his emotions. When he finally finishes, Spike says, "Ah."

"That's it?"

"It would be easy enough if you wanted to do something different," says Spike. "But you don't." This time, he understands why Megatron flinches. "And none of the other Decepticons will want to admit that, because of this garbage about liking fighting being the same as not having a brain. Processor. Whatever."

"No," says Megatron.

"So," says Spike. "Turn the story around."

"What?"

"Tell them they can stop fighting and go back to Cybertron with the Autobots, to take down the overlayers and do the bioremediation. They are free to do that, right? And some of them want to. Soundwave, I'm pretty sure. And - "

"Spike."

"Right. That's a choice they can make, and only them; no one ever has a right to make decisions for other people. But, if they feel up to the sacrifice and the challenge, they can put that on hold a little while longer, and go fight for - whatever it is you find that's worthy."

"As if you haven't already planned that," says Megatron, sarcastic but also - hopeful.

"There are two kinds of people," says Spike. "The ones who say, 'I suffered, why shouldn't they?' and the ones who say, 'No one should ever have to suffer as I have suffered.' And I think we both know which type the Decepticons really are."

"We're not builders."

"You don't have to be. Just - don't be conquerors," says Spike. "Wherever you go, whatever you do, don't try to solve other people's problems for them. Make other people's choices for them. That's what the _Senate_ did, and you know how much that doesn't work. You have to just - help people, until they don't need help. And then you move on."

"It . . . could work," allows Megatron. "Not an imperative, but a duty. It _could_ \- but what would we do for energon?"

"If you turn yourselves into a shield against oppression in this galaxy?" asks Spike, gently. "The Autobots _are_ builders."

Megatron says, "All right, all right." Then, almost whimsically, he laughs. "I really would like to interface with you right now."

"Sorry," says Spike, who is, a little.

They sit quietly like that for a long time. Then Megatron says, "I don't want you to die."

"Um?" asks Spike.

Megatron says, "You're going to. Half a vorn, you said. I looked it up, and that's only if you're lucky."

They go back to sitting in quiet.

It's not really a surprize when Optimus Prime arrives and carefully turns off the street before transforming and coming to sit with them. After a while, he says, "I owe you an apology."

"Likewise," says Megatron, which stops Optimus Prime short. "It seems our auspitice was absolutely correct. Not wrong and right don't mean the same thing."

"Well," says Optimus Prime. " _Yes_."

"And I would _very much_ like to interface."

Spike can see from the way Optimus Prime stills that this is some kind of shocking. But he's been able to get away with a lot of what he's done, this last year, because he's human and can ask these things. Mechs, even the Decepticons, always answer with the truth: being rude is one thing, but ignorance is another. "There is probably something I am missing," he begins.

"It's - we're supposed to interface through you," says Megatron.

"People _break up_ with their auspiticees if they go around interfacing directly," says Optimus Prime. "It's a declaration they prefer to be kismeses."

"But you can't interface through me," says Spike, reasonably. "And there's a lot - you really do need to. Why would I be offended now that you've finally decide to work it out?"

Megatron looks over to Optimus Prime. "I don't really want to go back to being kismeses."

"We're not doing it here," says Optimus Prime flatly.

"Why not?" asks Megatron. "It's not like the humans would take any voyeristic pleasure in watching. Probably none of them would even notice, except the one who - "

"We're not doing it here," repeats Optimus Prime. "Come on. I know a place."

Optimus Prime's place is an abandoned warehouse downtown, beautiful art deco architecture buried under decades of dust. Megatron looks around, but says nothing, just sits down and draws out a cable. Optimus Prime does the same, and they plug into each other without having to talk. Well, of course they do, they've been doing this eight million years longer that Spike has been alive.

After that it's pretty boring. The space is empty and cathedral-silent, except for the whirring of the mechs' intake fans. These run at a low rumble for a while, and then they turn up, and up, and up. Just at about the point that he gets worried, the whine cuts out and the two mechs simultaneously begin moving again. Megatron sits back against the wall, which creaks a bit but holds. Optimus Prime says, "Spike."

"Work it all out?"

"No," says Megatron. "It took eight million years for us to get to this point; it's going to be almost as long fixing it. But we solved . . . some things."

"Yeah?"

"Spike," says Optimus Prime. "We have decided - you're - good for us. Good at getting us both to see truths we don't want to, I mean. It's not something we _need_ anymore, but it's nice to have. For however long you want us."

"For however long you last," adds Megatron.

Spike swallows. He'd never meant this to be _permanent_. Hell, from the Cybertronian standpoint, it isn't even if he lives to be a hundred and twenty. But they want him, now and for the rest of his life. It's not a small commitment, anymore than his moirallegiance with 'Bee is a small commitment, or his not-yet-married matespritship with Carly. On the other hand, what the hell is going to do, say _no_?

"Of course," he says. "Ashen for you." And then, because that can't possibly be the only thing they worked out, he says, "And?"

Megatron and Optimus Prime share a look. "I'm going to annotate a volume of Decepticon poetry," says Megatron.

"Um?" Spike says. "I think that one's going to need some context."

"Right before the breakout of the war," says Optimus, "there was an anonymous poet who went by the moniker 'the Voice of Tarn.' Tarn was a city, mostly Decepticon, one of the first they levelled when the war broke out. The poetry was, I think humans would say, a call-out? A scathing indictment of the excesses of the Senate. So of course the Senate banned it, which has the result of making literally everyone read it. A lot of people agreed with it. _I_ agreed with it.

"But I - I didn't know how scathing it was until Megatron explained it to me just now. The Autobots _don't_ know, because no Decepticon ever thought to explain it. No, that's wrong. The Decepticons never explained because they thought we were fighting to preserve that age, whole and entire, and wouldn't listen. We only ever wanted to save the parts worth saving. Only now I know: there _were_ no parts worth saving." He says it softly and a bit sadly, but with the steel underneath that, Spike knows, means the Autobots are about to be dragged, kicking and screaming, through the Decepticon half of the war.

Spike turns to look at Megatron. "So you win."

Megatron snorts. "If by 'win' you mean 'spent eight million years fighting a pointless war against fools who actually didn't know any better.'"

"Because you wouldn't talk," says Spike.

" _Spike_ ," say both of them together.

"Here's the thing: you're going to go back to Cybertron. You will, sooner or later, and it'd better for you - all of you - if it is sooner. Am I wrong?"

" . . . no," says Megatron.

"Then," says Spike, "can humans even survive on Cybertron? If not, you need to think about building human-safe spaces."

Optimus Prime and Megatron exchange another look. "What about your matesprit?" asks Megatron.

"Oh, she's coming too, obviously - what?"

"You don't get to make decisions for other people," says Megatron. "Even your matesprit."

"I know my matesprit well enough to know the decision she's going to make," says Spike. "I'm not stupid enough to try to make her do anything she doesn't want to. But Carly would cheerfully rip off someone's arm for the chance to spend time learning science on Cybertron."

" . . . you are, of course, exaggerating for emphasis," says Megatron.

"He really isn't," says Optimus Prime, who has after all met Carly.

"We'll get married. Both of you had better be at my wedding - "

"What's a wedding?" asks Megatron.

"A formal ceremony of matespritship," replies Optimus Prime absently.

"You guys can teach each other poetry and _Brown versus Board of Education_ , or whatever, and then once you all know what you're going to do with the rest of your stupidly long lives, you can go to Cybertron and start building your base of operations. And we - me and Carly, of course, but other humans too - will come with you. I think you guys live so long, you forget about what's important without some quick young people to remind you. And you _won't_ attack Earth, because _making other people's decisions for them never works_. You'll just . . . make places where other choices don't lead to death, and keep the path clear. Okay?"

"Yes," says Megatron, intake fans belying his outward calm. "Yes."

"Ashen for you," says Optimus Prime; whispers, really, joy threatening to strangle his voice entirely.

"Damn skippy," says Spike.

**Author's Note:**

> It is Rosh Hashana! Have some weird aliens in weird-alien love!
> 
> As always: posted unbeta'd, please make tag suggestions, if you spot typos let me know.


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